


In Every Life

by Thunderrrstruck



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Multiple Realities, Multiverse, Not Your Average Time Travel, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), original lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderrrstruck/pseuds/Thunderrrstruck
Summary: Tony's desperation to protect the timeline takes him to the edge of time and then submerges him in multiple versions of reality. He must fight to protect all timelines from his most forward-thinking foe.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Original Character(s), Tony Stark & Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 8





	In Every Life

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Endgame. As in TRUE canon, Tony survived the final snap and retired to his lakeside home. Twelve years later comes his last foe. 
> 
> This story was written for two challenge prompts.  
> Challenge #1: Use two of the three themes give to you. My used themes: Displacement, Reunion.  
> Challenge #2: Incorporate your given flower into a story. My flower: Hyssop, meaning sacrifice.
> 
> This story doesn't take place in the same universe as my other post-endgame works.

Out of time. His surroundings nonsensical. All his eyes processed was the dark, the edges of this space made of shadow upon shadow. Like paper over paper over paper in front of a projector, except instead of light shining through, it was the night of the cosmos. His brain processed it as simultaneously solid material and empty space, and he knew the risks of a splitting headache grew stronger the more he tried to make sense of the duality.

He tore his eyes away from the maddening layers to ascertain whereabouts he stood, but there wasn't much to be seen. He waved a hand in front of his face but registered nothing. He couldn't make out his fingers nor his arm nor his toes if he looked down (and though sight was no indicator, by the curve of his neck, he felt himself to be looking down). The ground, if he could define it with such solid terms, seemed to work in the same dual manner as the edges.

Suddenly, a light burst in front of him. Golden white attacked his corneas. Tony squeezed his eyes tight, yet the light penetrated his eyelids. He moved a hand in front of his face to block the harshest of the light.

Too vulnerable he was to have one of his senses out of commission, so he challenged his eyes by opening them a fraction. If he kept his arm in front of his face and rapidly blinked, letting in a little light at a time, his sight gradually returned. Piece by piece, his eyesight strengthened.

In the centre of what he perceived to be a room, passed his arm, an orb of light. Pain aside, Tony made note of its unrestrained splendor. A few more blinks later, he realised what he thought was one whole was instead a cluster of smaller parts. The central most orb was the largest, every other one in orbit like children dancing around their mother.

Tony braved a step nearer, his eyes transfixed on the closest globe. He reached up with a hand and landed his fingertips on the golden surface. The tips of his fingers sunk into the mass. He smiled at the pleasantly warm sensation. He seemed to warm up not from the surface but from his core to his extremities. His veins sent the warmth all over his body. The temperature accumulated, and with no known limit, it continued building. His heart raced. His thoughts melted into one another. The blood in his veins literally boiled. His breath caught in his throat; he experienced pain before, but this was of a higher caliber; the only thing comparable to it was the energy of six multicoloured stones coursing from a gauntlet to his hand and down the length of his arm, imbuing him with power.

In response, the fingers of his left hand clacked into a fist, the metal of his prosthetic ringing in his ear, snapping his instincts into gear. He yanked his hand away from the orb, brought it up in front of his eyes, and studied the flesh. No sign of damage. Certainly no scarring like that which ran up and down his left side, a little reminder of what he had done to save the trillions across the universe.

"If I were you, I wouldn't have done that."

The voice came from the other side of the cluster.

"Anything out of time will be destroyed before long."

"And _you_ are?" Tony mustered his breath to say.

"Of no consequence," the female replied. "I'm here to right a wrong."

Through the globular cluster, Tony made out the form of a woman as she cocked her head to one side. Between curiosity and self-preservation, Tony considered which two possibilities - stepping back or leaning forward - he should take.

"Why are _you_ here?" she inquired.

Instead of doing either, Tony shifted his feet to the right to move around the boiling lightmass. He needed a closer look.

The form on the other side shifted her weight to her own right foot and propelled herself around the circle the same way as Tony, thus rendering his efforts pointless. Despite the pointlessness, he continued to move at minimal speeds around the centerpiece. Moving helped his thoughts to clarify.

"Similar ends," he said. Vagueness was an ally. He narrowed his eyes in hopes of seeing a clearer form, but the light was too bright and the cluster much too thick.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" the ambiguity narrated. "Each one, a 'what-if' of sorts. Thousands of 'what-if's, and everybody in every one of them believe their 'what-if' to be the only one."

"And, what if you were a little more vague?" retorted Tony. "That possible?"

"I could be. I _could_ tell you exactly what all of this is," she said, the figure's shoulders raised as if mid-shrug. "But why would it matter," she taunted, "if you aren't going to be around long enough to understand?"

Without a moment to lose, the form stepped forward and Tony caught the colour brown - brown waves cascading from her head to her breast - before a flash of light sucked her into the largest, most central of the lights and a blast of energy radiated from her entrypoint, knocking Tony flat on his back.

When the light faded and the breath returned to his lungs, the tired mechanic pushed himself to his two feet and wobbled a few steps forward. His eyes - brown eyes, wide with fear - gazed into the light. It could have been just him, but the light appeared dimmer. When he looked upon the central-most orb, he saw distinct forms in specific settings. He saw times of the day, hints of colour - the blue sky, the grey of asphalt. He saw a cat dash across the street. He saw…

He saw himself dancing with a beautiful redhead. He saw a tent and a little girl of nine huddled beneath its sloping fabric.

He saw an angry, old man and a weathered, blonde female. He saw a black grand shining in the lamplight, _his_ old grand, the one he inherited.

Images flashed, giving him only seconds to process each.

This was his life. These were people he knew, people he had met (but not always in places he had been before). He spotted a suburban neighbourhood he had never set foot in, yet that was his face on the man knocking on someone's door. In another orb, a scene of a meadow where purple flowers dotted the tall grass, a boy with dark hair and chubby cheeks raced with what could only be a friend. And yet another orb depicted a cafe scene; himself, some years older than the previous boy, leaning across a table whilst chatting with a redhead his own age - her lips pressed in a thin line, a pencil tucked behind her ear - yet Tony remembered nothing like a college date with Pepper; they had met in a conference room, and their relationship proceeded since with strict professionalism for years afterwards.

So, these orbs represented lives, his life but not his life?

 _What ifs,_ the woman had called them.

 _Multiple timelines_.

But what had she meant when she said 'to right a wrong'? Tony's stomach twisted into a knot. He glanced back at an orb he'd already seen - the suburban neighbourhood. A young boy pattered down the driveway; a woman climbed into a car, brown hair flipped over her shoulder; the same vehicle swerved through traffic, following the curves of the road at manic speeds.

Maniac driver - _aren't going to be around long enough_ \- his heart skipped a beat - he had only one choice.

Tony leapt through the light cluster.

* * *

His chest ignited. Every breath was pure fire. Light attacked his eyes like bonfire smoke, but unlike before, this light engulfed the interior of his mind so all he thought was golden white. All he saw, golden white. All he smelled, tasted, touched, the same. Ringing filled his ears, more than the bothersome tinnitus of old age. It stung his eardrums. It pierced so deep, he felt his 'soul' on the verge of unraveling at a molecular level. He opened his mouth to scream, to let go, to give the light back what it was giving him, except the light cleared and the pain released.

He was dropped roughly to the ground. Pavement. Cold. Hard. Gravel dug into the heels of his hands. He pushed himself up despite the gravel embedding deeper into his skin, dusted off the pain of his palms onto his thigh, and canvassed the suburban street spreading around him. Lining one side, a row of one-story houses of red, green, and yellow. Their screen doors were rusted, and the white trim around the windows and doors could afford attention. 'Lawns' was an overstatement; shrubbery outnumbered blades of grass fifty to one. Only half the total number of possible leaves adorned any of the bushes. In front of one house, purple flowers grew haphazardly, as if the gardener had preferred an eclectic approach to seeding rather than one which would warrant a higher standard of beauty.

On the stoop the very house sat a girl, red hair hanging around her like a curtain. She scribbled on something which rested on her lap. Her focus power outmatched the distractions of everyday suburban life. Between the lawnmower some houses down and the dog-walking couple passing on the sidewalk before her, she wrote.

A horn blared behind him. Tony jumped, but in his recovery, he spun on the spot to stare down the driver of a silver prius. The horn sounded again, this instance followed by a flip of the bird.

 _So, he can see me_ , Tony considered. _And if he can see me…_

This wasn't a living memory of some kind. He was actually back on Earth.

The air he breathed, fresh. The chill he felt, actual goosebumps. The car honking at him, real and really pissed off. Tony slid to the right so as to let him pass.

"Tony! Get back here!"

All of Tony's brain cells ceased to fire at once. God, he knew that voice. He knew her so well, his mind cramped with what it recalled. He spun to face the other side of the road. Opposite the line of low-income houses, a three story mansion stood with pristine white siding and a gaping entranceway framed by columns. In every window, lace curtains dangled behind the glass, swishing softly with the drafts which snuck their way in the crevices. The main door was open. Caught in the middle of the opening, a blonde-haired woman with a rounded face, a pointed nose, full lips, and trict eyes. Tony opened his mouth to give breath to the word on the tip of his tongue when he noticed something charging down the driveway. It stopped at the bottom, and Tony took the opportunity to study the blur in its moment of stillness.

Brown hair, a sour expression, no older than ten or eleven.

"Anthony Edward Stark!" the woman yelled at her son, but the younger Tony pretended not to hear. "You could have at least put on a coat!"

"I don't need one!" the boy called back. (From Tony's position, he could tell that was a lie.)

"I don't want any complaining later when you've completely frozen."

The snap of a heavy, front door echoed off the door of the house opposite the mansion. Tony looked back up at the white-paneled house to see polished mahogany in the place of Maria Stark.

Younger Tony shook his head, and some of his grumbling noises were carried by the wind. The older Tony, in the middle of the road still, allowed himself to be drawn in. But not even a yard had he traveled when his ears picked up on a roar in the background. It grew steadily. Tony lifted his eyes to a curve in the road and spotted a pristine, silver grill nosing around the corner. Tires screeched, a woman screamed in glee, a car bore down on the boy and the man.

Tony's arms started pumping. Sneakers slapped the ground. He was closer, but a mustang was faster. There was no margin for error. His brain calculated the speed of the closing gap; he drew a triangle on the road before him. _Run on the hypotenuse_ , he instructed. Leaning forward, he propelled himself by his toes. His arms outstretched, reaching for the kid's shoulder. His fingers closed around the target and dragged him off the road. Tony's shoulder hit the driveway to the mansion - _better me than… other me_ , he thought - but despite the fireworks that were his nerves, he kept a firm grip on the kid.

"Get off me!" younger him roared. Tony didn't hear; he craned his neck to view the trajectory of the car. It zoomed past him - the woman's voice failing to sound - and disappeared around the next curve. "Get off me, you weirdo!"

A slap to the face snapped his attention to the wriggling being in his arms.

He loosened his arms, and the boy immediately shimmied out and jumped to his feet. Tony waited on the ground a few seconds as the breath rattled in and out of his lungs. He had hung up the Iron Mantle because he believed he would not be needed for another crisis. He had a family to live for and memories yet to form. Morgan was working her way through undergrad; Will hadn't even reached the end of high school. He had a wife to love and an alpaca to keep away from the gojis, yet here he lay.

"A 'thank you' would suffice," he replied, disgruntled. He'd give anything to be back by the lake as witness to Morgan and Riri's disastrous grilling attempts than sassing his younger self.

"Yeah, sure, _thanks_ , big mister," the boy answered in undeniable sarcasm.

Tony refrained from rolling his eyes but just barely. "First of all, if someone saves you, don't be a yutz," he lectured, "and secondly, why in the world would you race across the road like that?"

"None of your business."

He couldn't even look at the kid without feeling a wave of annoyance. He found a new level of respect for Rhodey.

In the wandering of his gaze, he caught a vividly orange sight: the studious girl. A strand of loose hair drifted hither and thither in the lazy breeze. Her hand, once furiously scrawling over a page of lined paper, now stood frozen, her eyes transfixed on the pair of Tonys.

Tony realised multiple things at once.

"It's her, isn't it," he said.

"Who?" answered the boy, feigning obtuseness.

"The girl."

"She's my fr…" The boy narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

"Um." It was a fair question. Unfortunately, Tony couldn't say his real name without a worry digging at the back of his head. He knew a thing about traveling in time, and although this wasn't _his_ time, this was still a version of Tony Stark, and the danger with telling him the wrong detail was their level of genius. Say the wrong thing and he'd figure out exactly what was happening. "Uh, Morgan," he suggested, "That's it. 'Kay, kid? Happy now?"

Kid Tony wrinkled his nose.

 _Who am I kidding?_ I _wouldn't be._

"Just have fun and don't push her away," Tony advised.

He expected the kid to just turn on the spot and run away, but instead he crossed his chubby, pre-teen arms.

Tony felt a tug in his gut. In his mind, golden white light flashed. Urgency. Another situation. Something was amiss, something new but equal parts familiar. Another him, another Pepper.

"Seriously, kid, what are you staring at?"

And then his vision was overtaken by the light. The ground disappeared from beneath his feet. He glanced down, but his motion - just as it might have in space - triggered a somersault. He tumbled in the middle of pure nothing. He hadn't a clue where he tumbled to, only the direction. He was being pulled down and forwards by the hook in his chest. Time, he realised, was lashing out for any resource which could correct its course. Time was on his side.

Before he knew it, cheers and chatter exploded in his ears. Tony rolled into a nighttime scene. His hands caught his weight squarely on the ground. With a simple push from his feet, he leapt up. He paid no mind to the stares he received - _fifty-sixty-something-year-old falling from the sky?_ \- instead, he focused solely on detecting which facial features he recognised.

Late teenagers and early twenty-year-olds flowed around him. Milling, chatting, moving between the food vendors, no one gave him more than a single glance. Stadium lights provided the only source of light, but their focused rays were enough to see by. Down the hill, a massive, green rectangle spread. The scoreboard read 56 vs 48 next to a clock ticking down the minutes.

Tony walked forward, but his gaze lingered on the huddle in the middle of the field.

Something whacked his shoulder and Tony surrendered to its flow.

"Look where you're going," said his 'attacker' sarcastically, but unlike the rebellious sarcasm he sported himself, this sarcasm was of annoyance.

Tony glanced down at the hot dog which had rolled onto the ground by his feet.

"You should really keep your dogs on a leash," he quipped back. When he looked up, his wit melted into the back seat. The very redhead for which he had been searching… in front of him. Her eyes sparkled in the light, despite the icy blue stare she bore into Tony's brown. Around her neck, she toted a red and white striped scarf. The emblem of a shield with three dots sewn on its fabric matched the one he'd seen spray-painted on the field.

"Thanks," she forced. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to buy some more food for my friend."

"No problem," he diffused. If her eyes were oceans, he'd willingly drown. "Harvard?"

Her forehead creased.

"It's on your scarf." He pointed to the emblem.

"I know what's on my scarf, I'm wearing it."

" _O_ -kay." _Still feisty._ "Well, I'd help with the hot-dogs," he started, moving along from the moment without a glance in the rearview mirror, and patted his empty pockets, "but I left my wallet in the car."

How many times had Tony been on the receiving end of the look she gave him now, he lost count. He had the sense she was beginning to see through his bullshit. _She always did, didn't she_.

"Since you're not going to be of any help," she said, "not that I even expected you to be, I'm going to get by, now. Unless you have more _jokes_ up your sleeve."

Although transfixed, there was a voice in the back of Tony's head telling him she wasn't true. This wasn't his Pepper, despite the resemblance in both mannerisms and visage. It took all his might to break through the storm in his mind and answer her accordingly. _You have a mission. You have to find the brunette and stop her._ He dipped his head in acknowledgement and stepped to the side. She slipped by. Tony watched her head for the food vendor, slide the now-empty tray onto its protruding ledge, and be consumed by the crowd waiting for their game-side food. She looked back not once. But for Tony, even until the last trace of her lingered only in his mind, he watched the spot she disappeared, momentarily forgetting the reason he stood there to begin with.

"I'm surprised," someone spoke directly to him, "It takes an unusually strong soul to resist the time sphere."

It was the brunette. Tony only had to twist a fraction to see her emerge.

"That's what it's called?" he inquired. "Good, here I thought it would be something _cheesy_."

"How are you withstanding the pressure?"

Without a care about his snappy sarcasm, she launched straight into her own requirements. Tony looked her up and down, noticing nothing different between her and him. Some gods and aliens looked like humans, but she displayed no dependency on powers or any arrogance regarding her quantity of years or quality of knowledge, as other species have done in the past. She seemed, for all intents and purposes, human.

"You tell me, Rocky," Tony said, a simple statement to draw out her answer.

"My intentions are all which guide me."

"Yeah, 'to right a wrong'. You told me that bit already," reminded Tony. "Does that make you invincible to the whatever, now?"

"The time sphere. And, _oh_ , no," she replied, "but I'm not deteriorating _nearly_ as fast as you are. You're breaking down as we stand, sweetheart." Tony's eyebrows shot up at her pet name usage. "And I would tell you to back out and save yourself, but… what's the point if you're already dying?"

"Why not let me die? If _I'm_ the wrong."

"There's the narcissism showing," she chuckled. "You're not wrong, though, despite being only half the equation. If I eliminate the other, I'm sure I'd still be victorious."

The other half.

_It's you._

_It's always been you_.

One of the select people Tony would sacrifice the entire world for on a whim.

Pepper.

He clenched his fist. He regarded her with panic-triggered anger. Good, kind-hearted Pepper, she did nothing to deserve an assassin, and yet just by knowing Tony, she was on the brink of death. Again. Tony knew Pepper, he knew she'd rather know before heading into danger than wander in only then to realise the treachery.

"I don't have time for this," the brunette spoke. She sidled past him, making a point of brushing her shoulder against his. Tony's heart pounded. In five short seconds, she'd be one of the crowd, indetectable, absorbed just like Young Pepper had been when she disappeared. In four short seconds, the chances of saving this world's timeline would plummet. A glint of something by her side caught his eye. He shot a hand out to grab the blade at her side, but she knocked him away with perfect reflexes, so he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"Here's the thing," he said once she had stumbled to a halt, "I'm not going anywhere. You can try to kill me, you can hurt me all you want, but you're going a bit too deep into dangerous waters if you go after Pepper. I'll promise you, there will be a lot more to fear than some glowing time sphere."

By the hardening of her jaw, Tony assumed she understood. Down low, he spotted her fingers curl together, and her eyes were on fire. He kept a vise grip on her arm, maintaining the upper hand he had talked himself into.

"Pack it up, Schwartzeneger."

Through gritted teeth, she grunted, "Sure. How about into your face?"

Next thing he knew, knuckles collided with his cheekbone. His vision went black for all of two seconds. He dragged his feet back to stabilise himself, but she was quick on the follow-up. She shoved him into the concrete. Gasps erupted around him, and feet shuffled back to give them a wide berth - a playing field.

When he pushed his forearms against the ground to boost himself up, pain flared from his skin, bones, and muscles to the brain.

"No, you're _not_ getting up," she narrated as she stalked up to him. For a split second, Tony's eyes widened only for him to realise she had one thing he had already dealt with: _Gravity_. He allowed her boot to press into his chest, then he wrapped his hands around her ankle and brought it to his side. As expected, gravity played its part perfectly. She pitched forward passed the point of no return. Tony rolled across the ground to avoid being flattened and steadied himself on his hands and knees. He heaved himself off the ground, but all he could do was rest on all fours. He wasn't as spry as he was even five years ago. Old age hit harder than a runaway truck. Some nights, he thought the truck scenario preferable to the chronic back pain and wobbly knees.

His opponent was sprightly. She kicked off the pavement in the time it took Tony to recover. One look in her eyes told Tony he had angered her enough to deter her attention away from her goal. It might fade - he was keenly aware of that ticking clock - which meant he had to act fast to get her out of time.

With every rise and fall of her shoulders, she breathed and seethed. Her fingers sprung back into fists, both hands now clubs. Tony need only imagine the feeling of knuckles rapping across his cheek to spur himself into motion. She lunged, a fist soaring to his head. He ducked and launched himself to her side. She made to step forward, but he grabbed her ankle. Or tried. His fingers passed right through her. Instinctively, he grasped for her ankle again and made contact. The contact pushed the happenstance from his mind in favour of yanking her off balance once more.

For the second time that night, gravity worked with him.

She writhed on the floor, using all means to escape: a kick to his face, after which he only tasted dirt, and a shake of the leg, and the flailing of her arms to whack at his fingers. Tony knew he hadn't much time; she'd get away and then he'd revert to square one. He had to do something to keep the battle in his favour.

Why did she even want to eradicate all of him through time and space anyway? It was a treacherous journey, the risk of death apparently high. How angry she would have to be to reach for such an outlet. The devotion it required to not only learn of the timestream but of multiple timestreams and to harness enough power to… That's just it.

_Time._

Tony concentrated on the ringing in his ears. He willed it to get louder and for the tug in his gut to intensify. He used all the molecules in his body to call back the blinding golden white. Time worked to correct itself; any objects out of place would be erased, sooner or later. Tony could feel the truth of that statement in the unnatural warmth blazing in his chest. Time blazed to stand another day.

 _You aim to protect all time?_ he thought into the universe. _Let me back in, then!_

Their audience had grown with more and more college students, each face washed out in the stadium lights. Tony made the mistake of glancing up, for he spotted a couple scarves of red and grey inscripted with three letters. The letters weren't random, nothing about this moment in time was random. He nearly dropped the brunette's ankle in shock.

_M I T_

This was another moment of meeting. The 'He' and Pepper of this time, this was their introduction. If this time's Tony would feel even half of what prime Tony felt every second in love with his wife, then there was too much too lose. Tony doubled his desperation. He imagined the brilliant light of the time sphere entering his mind, and the warmth behind his sternum grew. His molecules jumped at the excitement, driving harder and faster until the great golden white wasn't just in his mind anymore but encasing his whole being. _Reason, intention_ , he thought, _I have one now_. He tightened his grip on the brunette's ankle as the entire world - the people, the field, the moon and stars, and the hot-dog stand - blended into one. His lungs blazed with unseen fire, flames which leapt to every single one of his cells. The pain ramped up, turning into thousands of needles all stabbing at him constantly.

But he held on. He had to hold on, even though the needles caught in his throat and he felt like giving up a scream for the entirety of time to hear.

 _I can't stay here_. The longer he stayed, the harsher the time sphere's death for him would become. _But where to?_

His nerves searing with the blaze of time, like bath water so hot it tricked the body into believing it was cold, there was only one thing he could think of:

 _The beginning!_ hastened Tony. _Take us to the beginning, the dark room, the place where it all started._

The boiling water spiralled down the drain of the bath. Searing turned to hot turned to cold, dry turned to damp, light turned to dark. The corridor he was in was dark and damp with a propensity for echoes. Somewhere behind him, machine guns fired and men yelled commands. Somewhere down the tunnel before him, one voice provided the screams in a song that was, unrefutably, torture. The sound of splashes bounced off the rocks. Another man growled his commands like sandpaper grinding at gravel.

Tony started in that direction. When he tried to step, however, he floated half a foot forward. He

surveyed his body. It definitely looked solid. Yet, when he raised his hand to the ceiling, his cells passed straight through solid rock. Out of phase, he was. Like on a very similar but still different plane of existence. Was he still in the dimension of the time sphere? Could he even break through this barrier? If he couldn't… panic rose in his throat. Would he be able to return home, or would he slowly be burned away layer by layer until time had consumed him completely?

Something happened this last time. Perhaps he expended too much energy to control the flow of time, or perhaps he just spent too long hunting down the timeline perpetrator. _You're breaking down as we speak_ , she had said. Tony assumed the moment he landed in another time, he was physically safe until he jumped through again. Yet he suspected time was always at work, no matter where he stood. The fourth dimension; unseen, unfelt, only processed, and always around.

He floated without answers for the frenzy in his head for minutes which felt like hours. _Priorities_ , he reminded himself, _then figure out a way to get home_.

He drifted down the hall, following the sounds of torture. When he reached a corner, two men in ragtag military gear burst from the other side and ran exactly through the middle of the hall. Tony hadn't the time to sidestep, but the men passed right by him, the last in the row directly through. He stumbled on the other side of Tony as if hit by an invisible bar. A gasp of shock escaped, and his knees thudded to the ground. But he wobbled to his feet a second later, the leader barking at him a command. They disappeared into the darkness.

Another scream split the dank air. Tony's entire form dimmed.

He knew where he was: the wrong beginning. This was _his_ beginning: the return of his heart, the first spark of the powder keg, the first flight of Iron Man.

_A brief soiree in an Afghan cave…_

If he drifted any further, he'd come across a forge doubling as a holding cell and he'd see men crowding around a barrel of water, ordering compliance from their great captee the only way desperate cave rats like them knew how. Tony felt phantom water plug his ears, his mouth, his nose and sting his eyes. He felt sparks fire from the half-baked engine underneath his grimy shirt barely keeping his heart on schedule. He knew it could not be real - phantom sparks from an arc reactor that wasn't even in his chest anymore - however, logic could not sway the onslaught of pain so powerful it knocked his mind off the gas pedal and slammed into the brake. His ears became alarm bells for a danger which already passed. Screams burst like a solar flare and stayed like noon rays on a Summer day. Was it the captured-him or the ghostly-him who screamed the loudest? There was no way of telling. There was only hearing. Until there wasn't even that anymore.

The screams stopped. The rough yells faded. Footsteps marched ghostly-Tony's way. He lifted his head to see their feet trampling over him - he was just air to their soles - and dropped his hands to his sides. He waited until the last of them walked by before standing, vision now clear.

He leaned forward to drift to the room they came from.

There was no surprise to be had when he found the door locked. However, with his newfound corporeal form, he drifted passed the solid iron.

Inside were two bodies. A jolt of electricity raced down his spin when he saw Yinsen's face, just as he remembered. He leaned over a cot which sagged with the weight of a body. _His_ body. Out cold, he was. Yinsen was holding a hand to the stranger's forehead. Even to the observing Stark, the man in the cot was a stranger, more ghost than the ghost in the room. _The man who had nothing_ , Tony remarked.

Retrospection was a curse wrapped up by folds of curiosity. It was a curse which pounded at his shoulders in hopes of pounding his soul into the ground.

The air on the opposite side of the cot flickered. Another corporeal form came into existence. Her brown hair swung off her shoulder through the midsection of the cot-bound man. Her hand hovered above the heart. Curiosity inched Tony forward, unable to imagine what a ghostly form of his adversary would do to the physical world. Apparently, she knew something would happen (why else go through with her plot).

He stepped up from behind Yinsen to notice she was hesitating. Why would she hesitate?

"You can attempt to kill a kid, but _this_ where you draw the line?"

When her head lifted, he saw the last thing he'd expect. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. The trembling of her lips told him she was keeping a river from flowing.

She mustered into her lungs a few breaths. "You wouldn't understand." she said. Her defenses slid back up until the gleaming water in her eyes suddenly felt more malicious.

"I'm pretty smart, I think I'll catch on."

"Not even the smartest man in the world can truly understand the problems faced in the future." Then she tapped on a personalised comment, "Not even you, Stark."

Choosing to understand her statement as a challenge, he said, "Try me."

One look at the resolve in her face told him that the challenge was accepted. Oh, she had a statement lined up that was sure to elicit a response.

"Thanos wasn't our biggest threat."

Tony blinked, as if a feeble flap of skin could protect him from the crumbling of safeguards in his mind. He had trouble seeing Thanos as anything but his biggest foe as much as he had trouble getting his voice out of his dreams at night, sometimes.

"What do you mean?"

"I come from a trashed world," she said as if that was all the explanation needed. "I didn't go to school like you. I didn't get to live a glamorous life, like you, like all your other descendents. The divide between rich and poor? It doesn't exist. We were all born poor. I scavenged for food and searched for water that wasn't poisoned by plastic or oil. People died every day from poisoning, you know, finally getting the karma they deserved for their oil spills. It sucked. It all just sucked."

One second. It took one second for him to realise she spoke of the future, except for her it wasn't the future. Her present, a wasteland.

"Even the one-percent in power, the one-percent with decent homes, even they choked on the smog. There was nothing we could have done going forward that was going to change anything. All we had was the mistakes of the past generations solidifying our fate.

"So, I did what I could. I read everything to do with past times; I read about you, I read about the snap and the reverse snap. And I found something out. I found that in every timeline where you lived, the Avengers found a way to bring everyone back. And if Pepper Potts lived, all your chances doubled. All the good it did. All the good the snapped _could_ have done, it all disappeared, Tony."

 _All the good?_ Tony failed to pair 'good' with 'Thanos' and anything he had done.

"We brought people back! We saved a lot of lives- we saved families!"

The woman lifted her head to pour her conviction into the mechanic. "You saved fewer than you condemned to suffer."

" _Trillions_ of people? That's _fewer_?"

"What's a trillion times two or three? Multiple generations on multiple planets, all across the universe," she corrected. "If it happens on our Earth, it probably happens on every other life-supporting planet. The asthma, the disease, the pure struggle. I'm doing all worlds a justice!"

Tony spun internally; his heart twisted in his chest, his brain churned within his skull. When the blurring motion ceased and the dizziness lifted, he had a moment of clarity, as pristine as if he were to wade in a snowmelt lake. She had a _point_. Tony had tried to do his part to power his company with strictly clean energy and reuse where he could, but he was one man in a world of deniers. He couldn't convince her of a different future because, even if she hadn't come from a desolate time, he knew just where their planet was heading if they continued the way they did. But he felt _wrong_ just considering it. He felt _dirty_ for a part of him to admit she was right. He didn't want to see her logic. So, he trained his mental energy on shoving the facts to the sideline to discover the gaping hole. His burning question.

"Why the hesitation?"

They both stood. With brown eyes, she stared at him, and with brown eyes, he stared back.

"Killing you, you mean," she clarified for him.

Tony dipped his head in confirmation. "There was no hesitating when you raced the car to kill a younger me, there was no hesitation when you shoved through that football crowd, but now you're here, easily your _easiest_ target, and.. What?"

Even as he said it, something about her eyes...

' _I didn't go to school… live a glamorous life, like you and your other descendents.'_

...they sparkled with flecks of gold just like Morgan's did. The urge to push back the stray lock of brown hair from her visage overcame him (and only closing his eyes and remembering the situation kept his muscles steeled and stationary).

She tilted her head to one side.

That expression...

Tony's legs obviously did not listen to his mind, for they took him closer to the cot, closer to _her_. His voice was quiet when he spoke;

"You're…."

"I go by Catherine, where I'm from, but yes, for all intents and purposes, I am a Stark."

"If you kill me, you're gone."

"It doesn't _matter_!" Catherine acknowledged. "One family for the state of the entire _future_. It doesn't matter who I am! It doesn't matter how recognisable my name is! It's all for the future, isn't it?"

 _Love;_ he felt a surge of it come over him. No matter what kind of person they were, there was a love that bound him to his family. For Catherine, he felt a responsibility. He was connected to her, and he found that so beautiful.

"Don't," Tony warned. "Catherine? It doesn't have to be this way. There are other ways! There's a whole timeline out there!-"

"This is the _only_ way! "

"No. It's not."

He breathed in sharply as she raised her hand above her head. There, it paused, it teetered. There, potential energy, which could turn into momentum at the owner's command. Her eyes stung him with her resolve. No more tears. She shook her head.

"It's _not_ the only way!"

Catherine's hand plummeted. She thrust her hand through the sleeping man's chest. A burning erupted immediately in Tony's heart. A hand flew for his own chest. He curled in on himself, shoulders pulling together, head lowering. His teeth grit together so hard, he feared he might crack straight through each crown.

Through slitted eyes, he saw his unconscious body, and he saw Catherine pushing her hand deeper, sending more and more time energy into him, and his gut took a hold of his limbs, instructing him with pure impulse how to act.

Tony straightened, absorbing the pain as he always did, and lurched for the body. His eyes tunneled into the sleeping body. Reaching out a hand, then another one, he clasped his younger arms. In the moment of contact, tendrils of electricity tethered him to the body. A thousand more volts of pain raced from his fingertips to his heart. His muscles clenched - knuckles white, eyes screwed, teeth gnashing - until all he could think about was the pain.

Yet, still, though his body did, he did not utter a scream.

He closed his eyes and felt himself sinking. Sinking to be consumed, all his life force a mere battery for the shell of a man in the cot. He channeled his energy through time, through the fourth dimension keeping him separate from this dank cave, and hurled it from his ghost to his young flesh and blood. All the pain, the grief, the determination, and the soul which he still possessed exploded. He burst at the seams, knocking Catherine into the air and into obliteration.

As for Tony's consciousness…

It was set adrift. His final explosion bombarded the cave with brilliant light. All his love and fire channeled into his younger self. The rest of him scattered into the fourth dimension. The golden white of the time sphere stripped the last of Tony's atoms apart. It tore his mind open. It burned every lingering thought. What was once the great inventor was not even a hollow pipe which could be filled again but a nothing, just a cloud of atoms dispersing in all directions, lost to the freedom of space. The notion of love, the reason he gave it all for an end so bleak, did not cross his mind before the end. His story did not truly end. Energy cultivated over ten years of surviving, learning, and improving had regrown his soul. His soul was what spurred on his younger form now, giving him a purpose again. And on it will go - crying, surviving, learning, and growing for the next ten years - until it came back to this one spot and began the cycle all over again.

Tony Stark's soul never really died.

But his particles…

They raced across the dark in space and time, in search of their roots, the stars.


End file.
